


Resurface

by twentyfourblackbirds



Category: A Single Man (2009), Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, M/M, Slow Burn, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 09:58:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3605967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twentyfourblackbirds/pseuds/twentyfourblackbirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the past eight months, waking up has actually hurt.</p><p>It takes time in the morning for Eggsy to become Galahad. Time to adjust to what is expected of Galahad and how he is to behave. By the time he’s dressed, put the final air of polish on the now slightly stiff but quite perfect Galahad - he knows fully what part he’s supposed to play. Looking in the mirror, what’s staring back at him isn’t so much a face as an expression of a predicament.</p><p>“Just get through the goddamn day.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resurface

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, A Single Man is a movie about an English professor who's lost his lover and decides to commit suicide. As this fic is a crossover, its storyline revolves around the intent of suicide.

For the past eight months, waking up has actually hurt.

It takes time in the morning for Eggsy to become Galahad. Time to adjust to what is expected of Galahad and how he is to behave. By the time he’s dressed, put the final air of polish on the now slightly stiff but quite perfect Galahad - he knows fully what part he’s supposed to play. Looking in the mirror, what’s staring back at him isn’t so much a face as an expression of a predicament.

“Just get through the goddamn day.”

It’s a bit melodramatic, Eggsy supposes. Then again, his heart has been broken. He feels as if he’s sinking. Drowning. Can’t breathe. Every day goes by in a haze.

But today, he’s decided, will be different.

\----

He crouches down to place the lilies on Harry’s gravestone. Tucked inside the wrapping is a folded up cover page from the _Sun_.

“I dismantled a Mexican drug cartel between today and the last time I came here,” he tells the grave. “And assassinated a would-be assassin of the prime minister of Malaysia. And rescued fifteen Japanese minors from a sex trafficking ring in Seattle.

“The question I always ask myself is: would you be proud of me? The thing is, I can never know the answer to that. So today I’ve made a resolution. I'm going to let go of the past completely, entirely, and forever.”

He presses a kiss to the cold marble. Then he straightens up and walks away.

\----

He’s in Harry’s old house, papers spilled across the dining table. The house, now more like a mausoleum, is otherwise exactly as it was when Harry left for Kentucky eight months ago. Turns out Harry had left it to Lee Unwin’s widow and children in his will, an example he was currently following. Eggsy’s mum hadn’t wanted it, so Eggsy had been left to do what he liked with it.

He’d slept in Harry’s bed for the past eight months until he couldn’t smell Harry’s hair gel in his pillow anymore.

“To Daisy Unwin, I leave all my property including the house once belonging to Harry Hart,” his pen scratches across the paper. “Except for that horrible stuffed dog in the bathroom, please toss it out or burn it.” The pen pauses. “To my mum, I entrust Jack Bauer the pug, who needs half a cup of dog food every day and thirty minutes of walkies, or he gets fat.” Another heavier pause. “To the Kingsmen, I leave everything else.”

He looks at the piece of paper, and rips it in half. Tears a fresh sheet, starts again.

“Dear Roxy,” he writes, “You’re the best Lancelot Kingsman has ever seen, and don’t let anyone tell you different. The old Arthur was right, you know - you’ve always had bigger balls than me.”

“Dear Mum,” he writes, “I love you. Please look after JB. He needs half a cup of dog food a day and thirty minutes of walkies.”

“Dear Daisy,” he writes, “I love you more than you can ever know. Please take this medal as a memento of your brother.”

He folds up the letters into their respective envelopes. In Daisy’s, he drops his medal in before sealing it closed.

Across the hallway, Mr. Pickles’ glassy eyes stare at him accusingly.

\----

He stops first by the Black Prince, long since abandoned by Dean and his goons, much to the proprietor's financial dismay.

“Patrick,” he signals the bartender. “A pint of Guinness and a packet of Lucky Strikes, please.”

He seats himself at the booth where he fell in love with Harry. In his head, the memories unwind. Harry dances across the bar like a particularly homicidal ballerina with an umbrella. Eggsy smiles and takes another sip of his drink. Good lord, he absolutely fucking loathes Guinness.

“Hello, handsome,” a pretty bird with dimples and fresh lipstick slides into the booth across him. “Buy me a drink?”

The regret Eggsy shows is genuine. “Sorry, love. I think I’m taken.”

Point to her - she takes the news with grace. “Shame,” she winks at him, before sliding back out of his life.

\----

His feet find him walking down Saville Row. Fitting Room 3 is open. His fingers pull the left hook.

This is easily the worst of his tasks today. Slowly emptying his various pockets and holsters, he reverentially, if reluctantly, replaces his arsenal onto the shelf, one by one. There, the hand grenade he told Harry to shut up about. Here, his taser signet ring that went on his right pinky.

Until finally, he’s standing in the middle of the room without a single weapon except for those God saw fit to give him. He’s never felt more naked in his entire life.

\----

He looks into the tri-fold mirror, at the empty space behind his shoulder where Harry should have been standing.

“When I first met you, I told you I had nothing to lose,” Eggsy’s hand is shaking on the glass. “I was wrong.”

\----

“Galahad,” says Merlin in surprise. “I thought you took the day off.”

“Just came to take a look around, see how the new Gawain recruits were doing. You know how it is.”

“Hm. Well, you should be at home,” Merlin squints at him. “Frankly, you look like piss.”

Eggsy smile is tinged with irony. “Nonsense, Merlin. I’ve never felt better in my life.”

\----

He takes the long way home, savours the sound of every footstep and the crispness of every breath, feels the colour seep back into the world. It’s obscene, but it’s exactly like he told the previous Arthur, eight months ago: he’d rather be with Harry.

On the dining room table, he tidies up the piles of paper into neat stacks. Will at the top. Personal letters to the right. The suit and shoes he wants to be buried in in the corner. As an afterthought, he removes his glasses and snaps them in half. He hadn’t been transmitting, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been recording. He considers them again and crushes them more thoroughly in his fist, wires and circuitry fraying out from the frame.

He does another quick check of the house. Door’s unlocked. Gas is off. Fridge’s empty. JB’s bowl is overflowing. He catches himself considering unplugging the telly to save on the power bill, and realizes with shame that he’s temporizing. He turns off all the lights and ascends into the bedroom.

A gun waits for him patiently on his pillow like a lover. It was Harry’s favourite - a black revolver with custom sandalwood grips and an inscription on the barrel from his grandfather. Eggsy had spent three months cracking into Harry’s wall safe for it.

Eggsy lies down, tries to get comfortable, realizes the idiocy of what he’s doing and stops bothering. He briefly considers his last words, and knows there’s only one possible thing they can be.

“I’ve always loved you, Harry,” it comes out as a choking sob, instead of a defiant declaration. Eggsy gives up on an ending with any kind of dignity, and inserts the barrel of the gun into his mouth. Thumbs the hammer. Grips with both hands. Pulls the trigger.

Click.

Shit. He pulls the trigger again. Click. Again. Click. Click. Click. Click. He knows for a fact this is a six-shooter, and he knows, also for a fact, that the gun was loaded this morning because he loaded it himself.

“What the fuck,” Eggsy tries to swear, and then gags at the taste of metal on his teeth. He rips the gun out and hurls it away in a fit of impotent fury.

“Ouch,” says a voice in the corner of the room. Eggsy freezes.

A figure detaches from the darkness. It’s holding two crumpled pieces of paper.

“For the record,” says Harry, sitting down on the bed next to him, “Mr. Pickles is not a horrible stuffed dog.” Eggsy finds that he can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t look away.

“And also,” Harry smooths the hair from Eggsy’s face, kissing his brow, “I’ve always loved you, too.”

\----

A few times in Eggsy’s life, he’s had moments of absolute clarity. When, for a few brief seconds, the silence drowns out the noise, and he can feel, rather than think. Things seem so sharp, and the world seems so fresh. It’s as if it had all just come into existence.

And he realizes that everything is exactly the way it’s meant to be.

 

**Author's Note:**

> As those who have watched A Single Man might note, the beginning and ending paragraphs are (almost) direct quotes from the beginning and ending narrations in the movie, and I am crediting them here as such.
> 
> Also, it's an incredible movie and I absolutely can't recommend it enough (that is, if you enjoy watching movies that make you bawl your eyes out). I had to pay homage to it. Hope I did it justice.


End file.
